Casting my mind back to 2004, I vaguely recall RA's debut being greeted with the rolling of eyes and shaking of heads - not exactly the full thumbs down, but something along the lines of why now? RA was set to be the next big thing for about five minutes back before I was even looking in the right direction - presumably around the time he was hanging out with Biggie and trading lines with the same on the delightfully named Cunt Renaissance; and then suddenly nothing happened for the next ten years, meaning the debut also served as the comeback album, a bit. RA seems to blame himself for this, or maybe not blame so much as simply accept the fact of his being the eternal square peg in a round hole. Die, Rugged Man, Die gives a disgustingly thorough account of the lad's face failing to fit, additionally providing testimony as to the massive injustice of this given that he pisses over most other lyricists, possibly literally in a few cases. It's funny. In fact it's bed-wettingly funny without it even being clear whether the guy is joking; if he's joking.
The beats have got that underground thump of classic material, and RA keeps it so real that you're either going to have to buy a new one or just get used to the smell. I don't know how to describe this monster without getting it horribly wrong, because some of it is fucking appalling, but fucking appalling in a good way, which I wasn't even sure could be a thing. My fellow old age pensioners may recall that Kiss had their adventures immortalised in their own Marvel comic back in the seventies, and that each member of Kiss famously donated a quota of blood so that it could be added to the ink prior to printing. I'm not well informed as to the process by which vinyl and CD are manufactured, whether either medium is originated from the kind of vat of raw material into which an enterprising recording artist might take a massive dump, thematically underscoring their work with the physical material of its transmission; and if it's possible, if I didn't just listen to it, then I feel certain that RA has at least given it some thought.
Yes. That good!
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